The day began like any other. Amami Yoko awoke after sleeping for three hours in the third hall. A full night's sleep, for her. She rolled out of her sleeping pool, slid across the treated whale hide panels and slipped into the lower canals. A few kicks sufficed to push her through that twisting course and downward to the core chamber of the illumination formation a few moments later.

That room, bounded by plank and hide barriers surrounding a box pool with a great yellow crystal in the center, was immensely familiar. Rolling over another slick division, she dropped into the box pool and positioned her frame in the lotus pose with her feet wrapped around one of the soft crystal accumulators tied to the larger core. Drawing on her qi, she established the channel between the two crystals and began to pour energy through the link. The start of a three hour stretch she would dutifully spend drawing energy out from within her dantian to power the critical formations that supplied light and heat to the carefully crafted bubble spaces of the Nine Peaks Range.

At the beginning and end of each hour other, weaker, cultivators switched in and out of the positions on either side of her, fulfilling their lesser allotments of the critical duty. No member of the Great Waves Sect could escape service in this essential ritual, without which their land would swiftly grow dark, cold, and dead. Even the sect leader conducted such service, spending upwards of five hours every day providing the necessary qi to operate the air exchange formation that allowed them all to breathe.

At the sixth bell, she took breakfast with the sect's other cultivators in the sect's sole audience hall. That room, formed of pumice sealed with a mixture of blood and resin, was the only large open space they possessed. An independent dining chamber lay beyond their means.

As it always was, the morning meal featured a mixture of treated seaweed, raw fish, and cooked clams. Faced with such broadly tasteless cuisine, she ate no more than her body required, an amount considerably less than that consumed by many of the other cultivators and limited entirely to seaweed. Her three seniors, who sat in line on her left between her and the sect head, utilized a similar diet. Their master, of course, ate nothing. His immortal vitality provided all the sustenance he could ever need, allowing his rations to go to another.

They ate swiftly, and in silence. The latter was a good sign, it meant there were no disruptions. All knew their scheduled tasks, announcements were unnecessary. Their sect head did not encourage idle conversation among his subordinates. He claimed excess talking was a distraction from the voice of the seas.

Had there been important news, it would have been shared swiftly. Their small community welcomed such developments. Not that they were common, life in their waters changed little from day to day.

After the meal concluded, the cultivators dispersed throughout the complex floating compound to undertake their daily tasks. They moved either by swimming through the lower canals or, as Amami Yoko chose this morning, by carefully stepping over slumbering mortal forms packed into the hallways between the processing chambers and the workshops.

Those driftwood and hide corridors were the only space not occupied by essential equipment. There were no mattresses for the mortals, but the sea beneath their flexible floors offered comfort enough to sleep in close quarters. They would rise to meet the day soon enough, when the glow lamps activated at the eighth bell. For now, the joining corridors existed in complete darkness, filled with bodies snaked around each other, but Amami Yoko had no difficulty finding her way.

She swiftly passed from the central chambers to the outer edges of the sect compound.

There she accessed her cultivation space beyond the boundary of their many barriers to secure air beneath the waves. It lay beneath the edge of the compound, in the midst of a channel of current created by the superstructure itself. Flowing water maximized the qi that could be drawn out in that region.

Stripping naked, she submerged herself entirely, breathing through a long tube. Holding in place, she immersed mind and body in the meditative process of cultivation. Another three hours of work, until the ninth bell, pulling all the qi she could back into her body. This sufficed not only to restore the energy she'd expended earlier, but to fill her with the strength needed to face the day's labor.

Not enough time to gather and compress qi into her dantian in order to progress toward the next layer, but there would be time enough for that during her evening session. Personal advancement waited upon the needs of the many. The sect's demands upon her energy had priority.

When the ninth bell rang, she pulled herself up out of the current and back through the aperture into the compound, feeling tingling equalization as she passed through the qi-empowered membrane that kept water and air apart. Strapping on her swords, she swam through the lower canals down to the deep diving platform at the bottom of the compound.

This route carried her past the partially sealed lower farming sections of the sect, full of seaweed trellis constructions, shrimp spawning pens, and the other infrastructure needed to feed the resident population. Now crowded with mortals diving and swimming about in the beginning of the day's work, they filled the surrounding liquid passages with ambient noise. Crawling through the narrow transfer corridors and across the driftwood floor chambers used for harvest and processing, she squeezed past many engrossed in their efforts, carefully evading physical contact. It was not a difficult achievement. She had, after all, made this same journey every day for the past fifty years, ever since she rose to the position of fifth in the sect.

The deep diving platform was one of the larger open rooms in the Great Waves Sect. The large square chamber with a moon pool in the center was formed of interlocking layers of leveled and planked whale bone. Used as a holding and processing point for the prizes of the deep, bulky, broken, and bloody, it required sufficient size to handle such masses. That requirement produced enlargement not found elsewhere.

That expansive area allowed the fourteen cultivators of the deep hunting crew and their twenty-five mortal aids to assemble without being jumbled together. Amami Yoko nodded to each of these, cultivator and mortal alike, as they arrived, acknowledging her subordinates. They were a proud force, these cultivators, a majority of the sect's disciples and half-a-dozen of its strongest vitality annealing realm initiates. Only those with the strength necessary to challenge the deep and dark spaces could be trusted to plumb the summits and canyons of the Nine Peaks Range to bring back their bounty.

"Two groups today," Amami Yoko announced as she made her way to where the ocean lapped against the edge of the air pocket that formed the lower boundary of the sect's controlled space. "Isamu Hideo," she called out to the senior member of the crew in the thought weaving realm. "You will take those in the vitality annealing realm on an oblique course northwest, with nets. Drop down two hundred meters and there should be squid migrating through the region, those that descended after yesterday's successful seining by the shallows fishing crew. They caught many, but we need more. Fill the people's bellies."

She added the final exhortation in the hopes of inspiring her hard-eyed subordinate. He was a quick-ascender and often resented mundane assignments. Harvesting squid was neither exciting nor prestigious, but they relied upon that catch. The sect was still recovering from the bitter hunger two years ago, which had taken many elderly mortals.

Stolen story; please report.

Uncertainty surrounded her as to whether or not the younger hunter understood that her choice to have him lead this critical mission was an expression of complete trust in his abilities. She tried to guide the deep hunters toward the understanding that consistency mattered far more than any grand prizes, but it often seemed impossible to pop the bubbles of glory-seeking that formed within the skulls of those who managed to reach the thought weaving realm.

"The rest are with me, southwest and down toward the sixth peak. A spotter from the shallows said they glimpsed a pod of beaked whales in that patch yesterday as the light faded, and as we all know they like to forage around the south peak. We'll dive hard and hope to encounter them there. If not, then we take whatever the summit offers." There would be something, it was a fertile spot, though the whales would be a far greater prize than whatever scattered sharks, grouper, or crabs they could pull off the seamount on a typical day.

"Dive now ocean born warriors," she commanded with the usual cry. "We hunt once more for sect and family."

They dove with seven cultivators forming each party. Amami Yoko's group contained two in the awareness integration realm, counting her own number, with the remainder in the thought weaving realm. She was stronger than her subordinates by far but took no pleasure in recognizing that divide. Too many in the deep hunting group were not truly strong enough to brave the dark and cold spaces that formed the lower regions of the Nine Peaks Range. Thousands of meters beneath the surface, considerable quantities of qi were necessarily devoted purely to survival. The body could not survive the crushing pressures or endure the lightless chill otherwise. Fighting against the true dangers of the abyss required even greater expenditure.

These waters were devoid of sperm whales for the present, thankfully. Those were the greatest danger, capable of charging and killing even strong cultivators. Squid and sharks remained dangerous, but they were lesser foes. Skittish creatures, they could easily be driven off by a luminous burst of qi. That technique was one she had made certain all in the crew knew well.

The target of the day, however, was among the most challenging and dangerous the range could provide. Beaked whales resembled, to those who saw them for the first time, giant dolphins, but their bodies were thicker and heavier, and they lived by diving to incredible depths. Even with toothless jaws, they could charge with sufficient force to severely injure even a powerful disciple. In the blackness of the deep such attacks might be launched with little warning.

But the rich fatty meat, thick hides, and broad heavy bones these animals provided were far too valuable to neglect. Only the great baleen whales offered more, and those were found in the range irregularly at best. The sect needed this hunt to be successful. The bones would support vital structural repairs long held in abeyance.

They swam southwest first, beginning in the perpetual twilight regions where the sect compound floated suspended in the midwaters. Following scent, current, and magnetic signals in the dark according to the guidance of the Exotic Submerged Orientation Technique their sect leader had pioneered long ago they were able to make an efficient journey to the sixth peak. As they swam, they descended gradually and evenly, following the slow currents that moved across the vast expanse of the midnight zone. There was no light here, the sun totally obscured by the bulk of the waters above, save for the bioluminescent blue flashes discharged by tiny creatures seeking to avoid nearly invisible predators.

Though the blue bursts amounted to no more than flickers, that limited light sufficed to let Amami Yoko see with perfect clarity. Eyes in the awareness integration realm could parse tremendous detail from even the least illumination. The majority of her compatriots, who were weaker in cultivation, were not so blessed and swam through a world of lingering shadows and dim glimpses.

To aid their progress she took the lead position and tied a large hollow glass bead behind her right ankle. This, filled with hungry worms, gave off a consistent blue glow as they slithered atop each other and provided a beacon for the other hunters to follow. This method was not without consequence, for the illumination attracted predators. Most of the deep sea fish and squid were poor swimmers and could not keep up with the cultivator crew at their cruising speed and could be easily ignored, but every hour or so some inquisitive gulper eel or curious catshark would try to take a bite out of her foot.

Amami Yoko sensed those strikes before they came, of course, and she dispatched all such attackers with sharp qi-laced finger jabs. Slain bloodlessly, they were added to the catch net she'd tied to her back. Gulper eels were foul-tasting and had weak skin, but nothing could be wasted. The ocean provided, but only for those who worked and obeyed. All those raised in the Great Waves Sect knew this.

They swam for several hours, taking pauses to replenish the air in their lungs using pre-filled bladders they carried wrapped around their waists. The pressure at these depths was such that breathing in this way required careful utilization of qi, but all had trained thoroughly in the method. Taking a single gulp of air roughly every thirty minutes and the contents of the bladders would sustain even the weakest across the course of the whole hunt. Each cultivator carried a second bladder in case of accident and to supply them additional air against the demands of intense struggle, protected carefully underneath their strengthened undergarments.

Despite cultivation enhanced sight, visibility in the depths was poor. Particulates of countless kinds filled the slow-moving waters, gradually working their way down to the sea floor in a span measured in months or even years. Surprisingly abundant living creatures, tiny, gelatinous, and strange, filled the lightless sea. Qi revealed them, but they blocked sight. Amami Yoko instinctively swam around those diaphanous bodies, moving past clustered jellies and larvaceans. Not truly necessary, as they could not impede one of her strength, but she did not enjoy returning to the sect with her hair covered in goo. That was a common experience for young cultivators on early hunts.

In truth, her hair presented a hindrance to hunting beneath the waves, and she would have cut it down to almost nothing out of personal preference. However, the long tresses were a valuable source of strong twine. By sect law, men and women alike were obligated to grow their hair to waist length. Only then could it be cut. She had some years to go yet.

The hunters felt the proximity of the sixth peak long before they were able to resolve its shadowy bulk in their sight. In truth, the great opacity produced by life in the waters and the turbidity of the currents around the seamount made observing its full scale impossible in the manner a painter might capture the vastness of a mountain on the surface. Instead, the sloping side of the peak's upper cone took the form of a vast grayed-out shadow that loomed ahead. The peak was, Amami Yoko knew, a rounded, lumpy, conical structure much slumped and fractured by ancient eruptions of fire from the floor below the deep. Such vast disturbances of the ocean floor had formed all nine peaks, but that was long ago. Now, only a roughly flattened summit remained, lingering in the midnight zone.

Massive multi-colored sponges and strange deep-water corals with pinkish-white arms and twisting finger-length tentacles covered the mountain. These were joined by crabs, shrimp, sea stars, sea spiders, and the flittering forms of deep-water fish and squid. Those two possessed strange colors, often with bright red bodies, a shade normally invisible in the lightless seas. Small, watery bodies with little flesh upon them, the hunters ignored these ambient residents. Fishing with net, line, and spear offered far better prospects when conducted far above their heads.

The hunters had come here in search of greater prey. At Amami Yoko's hand signs command the group of seven spread out across the shattered cone of the sixth peak. Moving swiftly amid corals, sponges, and mussels they searched for signs of whale activity. The beaked predators captured their prey using suction, leaving no traces behind, but their broad and rotund forms tended to leave marks in the undersea landscape. Furrows in the mud layer, shattered sponges, crushed sea urchins, and more. An experienced cultivator, with integrated sensory resources, could read such signs with ease.

It was not a long search, before they found signs of three of the animals. Two large and one slightly smaller form, a pair of adults and a lone juvenile. Amami Yoko suspected a calf was waiting for the parents near to the surface. There were numerous fish about, swirling over the surface of the broken cone and feeding on the detritus swept up from far below. With such abundant food in the water, the whales would surely descend again soon. They would dive many times, at least so long as daylight lasted at the surface.

Amami Yoko ordered her crew into position for the ambush.

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